Topic: Economic Devastation - page 12. (Read 504746 times)

Explain why it is stupid, the good things in life do not compensate the bad sides

That's a pretty stupid thing to say. Do you have kids? I bet not.

You can have a family without making children, adopt some if you want to have a family but don't make more children

Everyone will end up dead after suffering, struggling for nothing, unless you believe in god and in eternal life making children is pointless and causes suffering upon innocents

That's a bit extreme in my opinion, don't let fear control you, having a family gives you something to live for when everything else collapses.
I can forget the rest of the world exists when I spend time with them, the marxists will cull themselves and that's not a bad thing, don't get caught up in the cancer of politics and swept away by fear.
Do your own thing and only worry about that which truly matters.

I have watched my own friends turn into hardcore SJW'S in the last 12 months, you can't do a damn thing about this, I have really tried, now I just have to laugh at it all and enjoy the freakshow they're putting on.

Do not make children for any reason in this world

More thoughts on Kakistocracy, and cycle #6. There may be competition in the
form of a rebirth of religion - Coincube hints at this in his reference to ascesis.
There is no reason that these two could not coexist in some form.

There is a historical precedent: The Roman Empire form 310 - 400 and the rise
of Christianity. The downside is that this was not a good period to be struggling
to survive unless you had a large estate and a private army.

You might say that these sorts of divisions are playing out today in Western
Civilisation. As regards timing, these clashes tend to play out over decades,
so unless your're planting forests or building harbours you may not need
to pay much heed to events. I'll post something more on the USA once I've
had a chance to see the latest figures and assess the real value of CPI.

Investing in your children and your friends is the best investment you could
ever make.

 

This century is final agony before death, at least for western civilization

And it is fine, we don't deserve to live in this painful world

Correction he didn't text me. That was before cell phones were widely adopted in the Philippines. I think they sent the trailing van back to my house to inform me.

I'm used to your frank language, no worries.  This thread is a bit like Zero Hedge's Fight Club.  But, we all know that you're a good guy.

Gold is just a part of my diversification strategy.  As is Bitcoin.  And Peru.  And...

I certainly can believe and appreciate that The Philippines is a dangerous place.  Peru is as well, although I don't know which would be more so.  Peru is "Plan B" for my wife and me, just in case.

I think you are correct re your son coming to America.  Exposure to the USA is a good thing for a world citizen.  A great education.  Your son can always go back to The Philippines.

* * *

Re old business.  I did not mean to demean CoinCube's table re Cycles of Contention.  What I SHOULD have written is that his table is useful for the ideas, even if the Cycles (to me) are not predictable.

Ah I see you are employing the definition of hedonism to a wider scope than I was contemplating. I of course already concurred with the blue pill future:

https://steemit.com/society/@anonymint/the-red-pill-blue-pill-election-nyc-slumlord-vs-globalists

I was thinking of the peaking of sexual liberalism which seems to me is financed by socialism so I was thinking that as socialism peaked, sexual liberalism (e.g. feminism, rampant birth control, etc) would lose its financial support:



Are you sure that such control is that far into the future? Had you not heard on the recent Pokemon Go phenomenon?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3693814/Chaos-Central-Park-gamers-leap-cars-leave-engines-running-catch-rare-POKEMON.html

Internet addiction is another drug escape, and potentially capable of creating much more controllable zombies:

http://www.techaddiction.ca/internet_addiction_statistics.html
http://www.techaddiction.ca/video_game_addiction_statistics.html

Is there anything anyone could actually do about this for their family strategy? I know you have contemplated religion as a strategy, but this is just another top-down control mechanism. Afaics isn't any more sustainable (isn't moving us to higher entropy and degrees-of-freedom) than any other top-down control mechanism.

For example, when my gf chooses to eat junk and destroy her health, should I impose my will on her? I am then enslaving her free will.

You elided this important clarification:


Wouldn't good planning also incorporate not letting governments and others know how much wealth you have when there is no legal obligation to let them know?

If society goes feral, then it will be those who have resources that they didn't trap which can fight back. Legality won't be the concern, rather survival. Of course if society doesn't enter that MadMax scenario, then legality is the more sane approach. So why not both preparations as I explained above?

Trying to leverage a well functioning, sane society is of course the most sane, but which society qualifies?

Singapore is interesting with no capital gains tax (i.e. holding crypto-currency long-term) and income taxes at 20% or below (which is the Laffer or Hauser level):

https://www.singaporecompanyincorporation.sg/how-to/taxation/everything-you-need-to-know-about-taxation-in-singapore/

But Singapore citizenship is simply out of reach of most everyone:

http://nomadcapitalist.com/2015/07/31/how-to-get-singapore-citizenship-pr/

Singapore is a socialist country though. The population is small and the growth of Asia should counteract it though. So it is a coveted citizenship.

The West is headed into Marxist chaos. Trump represents the coming separatism between religious conservatives and leftists, but the problem is that every major city is leftist, so it can't just break into contiguous regions. I see instability and inability to do tax planning. Trump will lower taxes, then the leftists will regain power (Bernie would have won) and raise taxes (and wealth confiscation!) again.

The leftists in the USA (and they are the majority) are vicious and venomous. I don't see a good future in the USA because the USA taxes all foreign income and capital gains for all citizens (other than the $100,000 foreign earned income tax exclusion).

The other problem is that leftists are insane. They can do ex post facto shit and retroactively increase tax past years or otherwise confiscate wealth. Being a USA citizen is very dangerous if you have wealth to protect. Trump will turn this around temporarily, but i am not confident this will stick, because again the leftists are the majority and they are increasing their numbers all the time via immigration and they are insane.

I haven't been to the USA since 2006 so perhaps I am not in touch with the reality on the ground, but it seems to me the USA only needs another really strong financial crisis to lurch it very abruptly to even more overt Marxism than Obama. Have you listened to Bernie Sanders? He is a Marxist lunatic and the Americans were in love with him.

So that is why I say it is very difficult to plan in such a way that you should not also LEGALLY hide wealth. If we are talking about most people who can't change their citizenship, then they need the crypto-currency option I referred to.

OROBTC, apologies if my words were a bit harsh. I was suffering a very bad GI infection.

But I don't want to back off of my point which is you always fall back to "nothing can be predicted, thus the safest is to buy gold".

I know your point is that gold has proven itself for centuries. Actually that is even incorrect (although the case against gold is stronger now). There are many hordes buried in the ground because it was of course very unsafe even in the Dark Ages to have a large amount of gold if you did not have castle, an army, etc.. It isn't as simple as it seems (buy gold as a small entity and you will be safe from the government). Armstrong has stated that gold is only useful for about 2 - 3 year crisis of governance, after that food becomes money. Monetary systems need stability in order to function. The reason civilization has risen up from total chaos of the jungle is the stability of social organization which provides for all the great advances in productivity.

I think if you spent some time here in the poor areas of Mindanao, you might appreciate more human nature under financial stress. I remember when my American friend's daughter was decapitated in a roadside accident in Mindanao and when he texted me (he was the only one to survive as he was in the back of van behind the last front facing row of seats) and I followed in a motorcycle I reached the van along the side of the road and the locals were already dismantling it to steal the battery, etc, while the brain was still lying there in the highway and had been rolled over by trucks and spread out all over.

The Philippines is a dangerous place. I am happy my son will be leaving here to go back to USA in May.

Hedonism as a mechanism of mass control is not yet ready for prime time. Much like most of us are not yet ready to be knowledge workers. Both of these are coming but not quite yet. The links below highlight some of my thinking on the upcoming power of hedonism.

At war with World of Warcraft: an addict tells his story
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/aug/29/world-of-warcraft-video-game-addict

I honestly do not think hiding will be possible on a large scale so I would go with good planning.

It is possible to locate one's citizenship in a tax haven, but it is not clear if global governance will be able to force wealth confiscation on even those who do such planning.

So what is not clear to me is that transparency with good planning is the best strategy, or if the best strategy is hiding wealth.

I am thinking if possible, doing both is best. In other words, in some tax jurisdictions, you don't need to declare (large) wealth. Therefor you are free to hide it and you haven't committed any crime.

And this is why I think crypto-currency is going to crucial and specifically the type of altcoin project I am working on. See the following link:

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.17511398 (see also the post immediately above this linked one)

Another strategy may be to embrace the coming growth of Asia and relocate your citizenship there such as Singapore:

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.17517845

The door is closing for Westerners to gain citizenship in Asia. You would need very high qualifications and move fast.

Thoughts?


Then all planning is useless.

Of course it is nonsense that we are entirely incapable of understanding human transformation and doing some planning.

Just throwing your hands in the air and saying everything is random is not at all in touch with reality. This is what pushes you back to gold, because you only trust the past. If everything was entirely random, then we couldn't even be sure if we can breathe if we open the door. The reason we have great confidence that there is oxygen in the next room is because it is a very low entropy result to maintain a vacuum.

By understanding entropy, we can indeed understand the progression of society. CoinCube's model is all about transitions to higher levels of entropy (not energy unless perhaps he is thinking of potential energy and its relationship to degrees-of-freedom) and the contention between top-down order and bottom-up disorder that facilitates it.

This will probably occur simultaneously with the fledgling growth of the Knowledge Age in Cycle #5. And I suppose by Cycle #6, the Marxists have culled themselves and we can move forward with a mature Knowledge Age.

For a while, it will seem like the leaders have improved, i.e. Duterte in the Philippines and Trump in the USA, because the Marxists haven't gone to sleep. And Duterte is really a Marxist. The march of Marxism is incessant until it depletes all of its fuel. Marxism is not abortable.

CoinCube's basic theme seems to be correct.

There is a discussion in another thread which applies to Economic Devastation:

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.17517728

Usefulness of course depends on accuracy and more importantly time frames.

A world of universal surveillance and basic income recipients would necessitate a very different strategy for wealth preservation than one might deploy under our current economic structure. In my opinion contingency planning for such a scenario is wise.

...

CoinCube

That's an interesting table showing Cycles of Contention, but (as I often mention to iamnotback), there are too many variables out there, too many "Swans", for me to find it useful in a practical way.

minor-transgression

"KAKISTOCRACY" has become one of my favorite words, but I would really fear that system of governance should it arrive.  And it DOES look like a real possibility.

I really hope you are right on the transition from #cycle5 to #cycle6

The alternative is a descent into kakistocracy. There are already worrying
incidents that occur when individuals are placed above the law as happens
with globalisation. Especially when the individuals are in a position of power
eg police force attached to UN activities, or contractors with similar profiles.

The only defence against such abuses is a free press, and the wide
dissemination of knowledge. I'd guess that's where the next real world war
will be fought.

Sustained increases in living conditions result only from gains in knowledge. Top-down control plays in role in the the organization needed to facilitate the emergence of new knowledge. Top-down control facilitates its own removal for new knowledge eventually circumvents and undermines the prior order allowing society to climb to higher energy systems. The new system is also one of top-down control but the knowledge gained allows for an overall relaxation of the imposed order increasing economic degrees-of-freedom.

The evolution of the social contract is a progressive climb to higher potential energy systems with increased degrees of freedom. The state of nature begat tribalism. Tribalism grew into despotism. Despotism advanced into monarchy. Monarchies were replaced by republics. It is likely that in the near future republics will be consumed by world government, and perhaps someday world government will evolve into decentralized government.

Each iteration has a common theme for each advance increases the number of individuals able to engage in cooperative activity while lowering the number of individuals able to defect. Each iteration increases the sustainable degrees of freedom the system can support.